Keep Adding: Wrekage
28 Days Later
Keep Adding had just 28 days to construct the complex hybrid installation, starting from a blank white room. They built the destroyed-house structure from scratch, painted elaborate murals behind and inside it, embedded Cinema Displays and Mac Minis in the walls, cut and mixed video loops and music — and even made a reflecting pool to inject elements of mirror and mystery.
Throughout the design and execution they depended on their Macs. “It’s a natural thing,” says MacDonald. “Everything we do stems from drawing or working on the Mac.”
Noah MacDonald
MacDonald painted by hand and on the computer, shifting back and forth between media. “I might work on a painting,” he explains, “then take a photo of it, put it in the computer, open it in Photoshop, digitally rework it, and from that get a sense of what I want to physically do next on the actual painting. The computer influences the physical end of what I do, because I can work on the paintings offsite, then come back and paint what I’ve envisioned on the Mac.”
Experimentation
McDonald and Bixby used Photoshop, Illustrator and CAD programs to develop the structure’s schematics and render them in 3D. They took photos of the work-in-progress and brought them home to experiment with painting concepts — color schemes, perspectives, how lines would intersect — and to brainstorm their next steps.
Bixby used Final Cut Pro to edit and mix video loops, incorporating stills from the Old Mesilla site. With DVD Studio Pro he created the discs that ran during the show as well as an electronic catalog that documents their entire process.
“All the Apple software is clean, well-organized and user friendly,” says MacDonald. “The Mac allowed us to see the work from different angles as we were creating it. It helped us think things through. We’re into the idea of incorporating technology into everything we do, because the Mac mixes with everything — we’re always going cross-platform.”
Swoops and Messes
Meanwhile Richard Devine, their frequent musical collaborator, was using Logic, Nuendo and DVD Studio Pro to craft a 5.1 surround-sound piece for Wrekage. As MacDonald describes the soundscape, “it was all creaking doors and swoops and messes of noise floating around in the air. It echoed through the building. You didn’t even realize it was the soundtrack to our installation until you got close.”
The effect was vital to Wrekage; overall, MacDonald counts music as the single biggest influence on Keep Adding. “We play music constantly while we work,” he says. “We’re avid music collectors. And we love to work with musicians — they represent, in sound, what we do with the physical forms.”
For MacDonald and Bixby, works like Wrekage afford an opportunity to comment on universal forces. “The processes of destruction and creation are interconnected,” says MacDonald. “Some people see Wrekage as an old, decaying building, while others see it as a sign of new life.”
Infinite Adding
MacDonald confesses that he usually finds political art “dated, boring, irritating.” He’s not about making so direct a critique. Instead, he relates, “I sit around and see shapes. I look at how a wall intersects with a door and I think, ‘Wouldn’t it be cool if that was broken?’ I try to work these things out. And because I’ve drawn and painted for so long, that’s how I do it. Keep Adding is a way for me to see what I can do with the forms, shapes, lines, architecture I see.”
You could say he and Bixby are making it up as they go. Since he dropped out of school, comments MacDonald, “No one said, ‘Here’s the road, take a left; here’s $1000, buy a computer.’ Now, it’s like a dream: I wake up and say, ‘Hey, I want to make this thing!’ When I look back, I can see that I’ve done a lot, and it inspires me to do more.”
Reaching farther comes naturally. “With most things I do,” says MacDonald, laughing, “I don’t know if, or when, it’s complete. I have to make myself stop. Because I could keep adding infinitely.”
